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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26105242">Soft lies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/Merricat%20Kiernan'>Merricat Kiernan (rosa_himmelblau)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Roadhouse Blues [33]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiseguy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>penzopolis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:08:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,718</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26105242</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/Merricat%20Kiernan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>More Vinnie trying to work things out in his own mind.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Roadhouse Blues [33]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Soft lies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"A pack of Luckys," Vinnie said to the drugstore clerk, and as the guy reached for them, "Better make that a carton."</p><p>Without a word, the guy turned around and grabbed a carton from the rack behind him and rang it up. He didn't even blink when Vinnie handed him the hundred.</p><p>Vinnie tossed the cigarettes in the back seat and drove back to the bank, then he parked and lit one of his old cigarettes. He was supposed to go in the bank and put the money away, but he was in no hurry. This was the last pack of Viceroys. He kept switching brands, thinking he should just quit, only if he quit, what would he buy with his money? Sonny's birthday only came once a year, and Christmas, and after that he was out of reasons to spend his stupid money.</p><p>Anyway, switching brands seemed like the first step in quitting, but maybe he was just nuts. Sonny complained about his smoking, complained that <b>he'd </b>only started because Vinnie smoked. He didn't complain about Vinnie switching brands every time he bought a carton, though; he seemed amused by it, almost as though he understood what Vinnie was doing, or as if he almost understood it. Sometimes Vinnie thought about buying a carton of Eves, see if the cigarettes having little flowers on them would discourage Sonny from smoking them. "Are you looking for a punch in the face?" he asked himself. Still, it would be interesting to see what would happen. Would Sonny break down and buy his own cigarettes? Would he bug Vinnie until Vinnie bought something more manly? Would he actually quit?</p><p>Vinnie had no idea. All he knew was that <b>he</b> couldn't quit smoking until he'd finished with his money laundering.</p><p>When he'd been a cop, he'd never thought about how tough laundering money could be. Of course, those banking classes had been about guys working on a much bigger scale, and unlike Vinnie, they were <b>trying</b> to leave a paper trail, one that looked legit. Vinnie wanted there to be no trail at all.</p><p>He had more than enough money, that was the problem. Sonny had been giving him money for years now, while he paid for everything himself, so by the time they settled down, Vinnie had quite a nest egg of fives and tens and ones that added up to just over eighteen thousand dollars.</p><p>Then Rudy sent him a cashier's check for another ten thousand dollars, "Just in case."</p><p>"Mad money," Sonny had said, amused.</p><p>"For ten grand, I could get pretty mad at you," Vinnie agreed, cashed the check, and stuck the money in a safety deposit box. That really cracked Sonny up, since he thought Vinnie was hiding the money so he wouldn't have to pay taxes on it. Vinnie didn't argue the point. He didn't want to explain what he knew was the crazy thinking behind his not opening a checking account. He knew nobody knew his new name, he knew he was safe, he knew—</p><p>The safety deposit box felt safer. Hence the name, right? And he liked Sonny thinking he was evading taxes better than him knowing the truth, whatever that was.</p><p>And then Roger showed up.</p><p>Originally, there had been three million, five hundred and thirteen thousand, seven hundred dollars, all in thousands and hundreds. Why that amount, why those denominations, those answers were known only to Roger, who might have had a very good reason, or no reason at all. It could simply have been the amount that fit in the case. The times Vinnie had thought to ask, Roger had been unavailable to answer.</p><p>Vinnie had given one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Frank, which left him with two million, two hundred and sixty three thousand, seven hundred dollars he didn't need and wasn't sure what to do with. Sometimes he imagined telling Sonny how fucking relieved he'd been to find those Swiss bank withdrawal cards had disappeared with Roger, that he'd only been left with a massive amount of cash, instead of what felt to him like the weight of all of Mel's lunatic fortune. Too much money. Sonny would never understand that one; it would be like trying to tell Pete there was too much God.</p><p>Part of the problem was the denominations. Vinnie didn't spend money like water the way Sonny did, so he had no casual way of breaking a freaking thousand dollar bill, even if there <b>was</b> any casual way for anyone to break a thousand dollar bill, since they'd stopped printing them sometime back in the early eighties. Vinnie wondered where Roger had gotten so many of them, but wondering about Roger was a waste of time, if you were looking to get somewhere. Maybe they had been Mel's, Mel would have liked difficult money. Anyway, they weren't being circulated anymore, but they hadn't yet become as rare as unicorn horns. If he and Sonny went places for five hundred dollar dinners, a thousand to pay the tab wouldn't look too weird, right?</p><p>But Sonny paid for everything—and when he paid for big things, he mostly used his credit card. Flashing hundreds was one thing; flashing thousands was stupid. And anyway, he didn't know about that money.</p><p>Cigarettes were the one thing Sonny wouldn't pay for (directly). It was a matter of principle, and like most of Sonny's principles, it was kind of harebrained. But because of this principle, Vinnie had to buy their cigarettes, so whenever they were running low, he'd come down to his safety deposit box, get out a thousand dollar bill, and get the bank to change it down to fifties. Then he'd take a hundred and buy a carton of cigarettes. And then he'd put the fifties and the other small bills into the safety deposit box.</p><p>He had been doing this since shortly after Roger left, and so far he'd laundered nineteen thousand, five hundred and forty-eight dollars. Not bad for a guy working alone. At this rate he’d get his lung cancer diagnosis right around the same time he changed his last thousand.</p><p>Sometimes he wondered why he was bothering to do it, but the thing was, this was his parachute. What good was a parachute that wouldn't open? And what was the point of having a lot of money to get you out of a jam if that money just called attention to you and got you in a bigger jam? If you were giving someone a million and change, thousands were fine, but what if you were—</p><p>Vinnie didn't know what. He couldn't come up with a scenario where he'd need more money than he already had. Million dollar plane tickets? Bribing someone with small bills? Rescuing Sonny if he got kidnapped by—</p><p>Vinnie couldn't imagine Sonny being kidnapped, or who would want to. Theresa, maybe, but she'd never take money for him, and she'd probably shoot Vinnie anyway. And why was he thinking about this again?</p><p>Oh, yeah. Because it always led to him trying to imagine coping without Sonny around, with no one around, being alone and making all his own decisions, still unable to call Frank because Sonny gone would only eliminate the one complication in his life he really liked. He'd still have to worry about whoever had him dragged off to El Salvador, and he'd have to worry about them grabbing Frank, too. He'd have to worry about Rudy having him locked up, if Frank let Rudy know he was alive.<i> Frank wouldn't do that, not if you asked him not to. Unless he thought you were </i>non compos mentis, <i>too, unless he thought it was for your own good, unless—</i></p><p>He couldn't call Frank. But he wouldn't be reduced to living in the kind of place he'd stayed in in Seattle, either. But wherever he did stay, would they think he was a criminal or merely eccentric, if he paid in thousand-dollar bills?</p><p>
  <i>If Sonny wasn't around, I wouldn't need to hide what I’m doing from him, anyway. You really think paying for stuff would be your biggest problem if Sonny wasn't around?</i>
</p><p>It was better not to think about that.</p><p>So he lit another cigarette and thought about something else, a series of something elses, starting with the rain. It was raining again, and Vinnie had half a mind to put out his cigarette and go to sleep. Then it stopped raining. So he kept smoking, and it stated raining again.</p><p>Vinnie watched the rain hit the windshield, and wondered why it seemed to rain so much more in San Francisco than it did in New York. They were both on the coast. What was the difference?</p><p>He had no idea.</p><p>He kept trying to figure out why the sex mattered when it didn't really matter. He could have been perfectly happy never to have sex with Sonny again, and that was fine except that Sonny couldn't keep his hands off him, and then things escalated and it all got crazy and then it suddenly mattered very much. It was the biological imperative, or something. And really, why shouldn't the sex matter? They were married, after all.</p><p>Sonny would have an aneurysm if Vinnie said that to him, but for all intents and purposes it was true. What was this if not a marriage? Pat-the-Cat's line about everything in life being a marriage intruded on Vinnie's thoughts, but while that might be somewhat true, this was completely true. They cohabitated, they shared practically everything, and sometimes it felt like they were living inside each other's skin. It wasn’t as if either one of them could possibly form a permanent relationship with anybody else, male or female.</p><p>Which led to, every time Sonny brought home stewardesses, he said afterwards that he knew Vinnie would fall in love with his girl at first sight. Vinnie wondered what would happen if that happened someday. The thought made him laugh, then he thought of Sonny falling—</p><p>And stopped laughing. What a lonely feeling. Not that it would ever happen. Sonny wanted him.</p><p>And Vinnie wanted—nothing. He couldn’t dredge up the energy to want.</p><p>What a lonely feeling.</p><p>He put out his cigarette and went into the bank.</p>
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